Postpartum

Whenever I hear that someone has had a baby, I spend the next two months thinking, "I hope she's ok. I hope she's not too beat up. I hope nursing is going alright. I hope she's ok. I hope her other kids are being good. I hope her husband gets it. I hope it's going ok with her mother-in-law. I hope she's ok. I hope she's getting some sleep. I hope she's ok."

There's nothing worse than a first baby, but postpartum is still pretty darn awful every time--harder, in some ways, than the first time. Even if you're not as badly mangled, once you have more than one kid the "sleep when the baby sleeps" thing is useless, but it still clatters around your brain pan for spite. The pain is constant, the demands are brutal. It seems so unfair that I should be in such a bad way--utterly spent by pregnancy, cruelly injured from delivery--but there is no way I can lie in bed being taken care of for two weeks, which is what I feel like I need.

Postpartum=alone. You're limping around in society with a raw and sizeable wound, and the most anyone offers you is a casserole and a joke about getting some sleep. (The least anyone offers is some comment about your appearance/weight. Right back atcha, JERK.) Not that I blame them. There really is nothing anyone else can do about the worst parts of it. You have to take care of the baby regardless of how maimed you are, and they have to live their lives. And if you've got a bunch of other babies, too, well . . . buckle down, girl. Sorry to have to tell you that when you've never felt worse.